


Blood in the Water

by SpaceWaffleHouseTM



Series: One Shots from the Waffle House [25]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Forbidden, Forbidden Love, Kissing, M Rating But No One Fucks, No Pregnancy, Nudity, Plot Related Nudity, Post TLJ, Showers, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23082844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM
Summary: The first time Rey winds up covered in blood from a battle, the force connects her to Ben while she's showering it off. With both of them naked and vulnerable, they both know it won't be long before they cave to the forbidden connection between them, it's just a matter of who breaks first.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: One Shots from the Waffle House [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1298357
Comments: 51
Kudos: 263
Collections: Reylo Theme Event





	Blood in the Water

They’ve never had a choice when the bond connects them. It’s always been random, sporadic, and completely out of their control. 

It’s connected them when they’re in battle, and he watches her fight from his bed or in a meeting room like he’s hypnotized. Watching her move is mesmerizing. She’s death with a lightsaber and absolutely ferocious, holding nothing back. He thinks he might be a little in love with how Rey fights, how feral and raw she is. He’s felt that strength at his side, in his face when she tore it open, and both times all he could do--when he wasn’t on the brink of death, of course, was stare at her in awe. 

Sometimes it connects them while they’re sleeping, and they’ll wake up cuddling and for a few minutes, he knows they both enjoy it before they pretend to wake up and move away from one another. He likes those times. She’s warm, so kriffing warm, and he loves the feeling of her skin against his where their hands sometimes meet. He lives for it, holding her close, or maybe being held by her. Neither of them seems to be picky. All their unconscious minds seem to care about is that they’re holding one another, that they’re close, and that nothing can pull them apart. 

It has connected them in the shower before, too, and they were shocked by it at first, but they’ve reached a point where they’re politely saying, “excuse me,” as they reach around each other for the shampoo. He once even helped her reach around to a difficult place on the back of her head to retrieve a stray blossom petal that had somehow wound its way into her tresses. 

When it does it now, he’s once again in the shower, scrubbing the day off of his chest as he listens to the sound, the familiar hum of the bond connecting. A smirk blossoms on his face, then he turns around slowly, laughing quietly as he turns to look at her, the sound of another shower running confirming that she’s in the same boat as he is. “Enjoying the view?” he asks, because sometimes when this happens, all they can do is flirt a little. It’s wrong, they both know it’s wrong, but when they have no choice in when this happens… 

They have to make the best of it, but when he turns around, she isn’t laughing at his joke or rolling her eyes, she’s just standing there. No, not even just standing there, she’s got her eyes cast toward the ground, her hands resting awkwardly at her sides, and her whole body coated in a layer of crimson blood. “R-Rey?” His voice is disbelieving, his jaw dropping the second he saw her, shivering and naked beneath the spray of hot water, blood dripping off of her everywhere.

She’s trembling, he notices, shaking so badly she seems to be struggling to breathe, and he suddenly senses her fear over the bond. All of the emotions she’s feeling are projected right into his mind, allowing him to sense her panic, her terror, her immense sorrow, and if he looks a little harder, he can all but see what did this. 

This is a new situation. They’ve never met each other like this, at the worst moments of their lives. He can sense this is something that’s going to haunt her long after the war is over, and he knows she never talks about these kinds of things with her Resistance friends. They’re close, but not in the way he is with her. 

They’re supposed to be enemies, they’re supposed to hate each other, but right now, in this moment, he knows she doesn’t need him to be her enemy, she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want him as the teasing asshole he sometimes tends to be. She probably doesn’t want him there at all, but he can’t just leave her like this. He has to do something, he has to help her. 

Reaching out gently with one hand, he swallows nervously, his fingertips stopping just before they can reach her arms. “Rey, are you hurt?” he asks softly, his fingers just barely grazing the skin of her arm, creating a trail in the thick blood that’s gathered there. 

She shakes her head, then she looks up into his eyes, and he can see tears streaming down her cheeks, the whites of her eyes turned red from crying. “I… I’m fine,” she whispers, but he can tell it’s a lie. Or maybe physically she’s fine, but mentally? Something else happened. Something bad. 

“Can I touch you?” he asks, waiting patiently for her to nod before he takes hold of her arm, pulling her under the spray with him, watching as the red begins to stream down her body in rivulets. “What happened?”

She scoffs, then she moves to turn away from him, seeming surprised when he lets her, and she turns back into him, stepping a little bit closer as if she’s chasing his warmth. “Accident. Running a mission through thick rainforest,” she tells him. “We… we had this collision, everyone was… I was the only one who made it. Held them while they died. That’s why there’s all this uh… blood.”

Her voice grows shakier as she talks, trembling viciously by the time she finishes and he can see her threatening to sob at any moment. Kriff, she’d just lost half of her team, and not to war, not to an enemy she can blame, but to an accident, something no one can control, something that could happen regardless of their opposing sides. She has no one to blame, and she’s lost. That rage that usually fires this woman he cares for so deeply is gone, and he worries for her. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, meaning every word as he begins to rub a hand down her arm, trying to scrub off the blood as best he can. “Can I help you wash this off?”

A tear streams down her face, and in response, she steps in toward him, and his arms can’t help but wrap around her, not caring that he’s getting the blood of soldiers he’s never met all over himself as he holds her close. Tiny, sharp, gentle little sobs start to shake her, and he feels a pang of sympathy strike him as he begins to tenderly stroke his fingers up and down her spine. “Shh, it’s going to be okay.” It is, he means every word of that sentence, but right now, the pain is fresh, and he wants her to know that it’s okay to fall apart right now. 

Not everyone, even the strongest of people, can be strong all the time. Sometimes a collapse is inevitable, and if she’s going to do it, she might as well do it now. There’s no one else around but him, and who would he tell? If anyone finds out that he sees her, that he’s doing this, they’re both dead. 

No one can ever know about this, and that’s why he’s the perfect person for her to fall apart on. 

“I couldn’t save them,” she whimpers, burying her head in his neck as the water washes over them, crimson pools forming around their feet as she cries. “I-I just wanted to save them.”

“I know, Rey, I know,” he replies, hands applying a little more pressure on her back as he works to get the drying blood off of her. 

_ Force,  _ he shouldn’t be doing this. She’s supposed to be his enemy, he’s supposed to wish all kinds of hells on her, supposed to be working to eliminate her from this game, this war they’re fighting. Yet in this moment where she’s at her most vulnerable, all he wants to do is help her become clean again, to hold her close until she asks him to let go. He wants to bask in the warmth of her body against his, for the bond to keep them together until he can know she’ll be okay again. 

It is everything he shouldn’t want, but he needs this almost as badly as she does. 

Rey’s sobs are quiet, soft, but the pain he can feel over the bond is some of the most intense he’s ever felt. He wonders who she lost, how important they were to her, and a part of him yearns to care for someone that much, to break apart because he misses them that much. Sometimes he thinks he feels that way for his father. Regret fills him daily for what happened on Starkiller Base, but he’s never allowed himself to process that grief. 

Not in a way that’s healthy, at least. 

Hands reaching up to stroke her hair, Ben holds her a little more tightly against him, not caring that they’re both naked, that he can feel every contour of her skin where it presses against his. For half a second, he thinks about the breasts he can feel brushing against his upper abdominal muscles, but he pushes those thoughts aside. He can’t think about that right now, that’s the last thing she needs. 

“Why are you doing this?” she asks him after a while, most of the blood gone from her body, the red in the water significantly more diluted than it was when she’d first come in here. “You should push me away.”

“Why are you letting me?” he replies, and both of them fall speechless for a moment, unsure of what to say in the aftermath. They’re both right. He shouldn’t be doing this, but she shouldn’t be letting him do it. They’ve reached an impasse, a moment where there is nowhere to proceed except for both of them to admit things they’re too stubborn to admit. 

Sniffling, she lets one of her hands slide down in the space between them, resting on his chest so that she must be able to feel it racing beneath his skin. “You’re complicated. You’re everything I should hate, but you’re in my head, my soul, and...” Her nails skim over his chest, the touch so light it sends a shiver running through his whole body. “You drive me to the brink of madness, but you may be the only person who won’t pity me for this, who might actually know what I need right now.”

A scoff of disbelief leaves him, then he nods, resting his chin on the crown of her head in the aftermath. “I do,” he whispers. “I do know.”

His eyes cast a glance downward, and now he can see she’s almost completely clean of blood, just a few patches on her sides that his hands soon scrub free, rubbing gently over her skin in a subtle friction that he doesn’t even think adds much warmth, but he knows feels nice from her contentment in the bond. “If we both survive this…”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

A part of him knows what she’s trying to say, but the majority of him knows he has to ignore it. This has almost come up a few times, the idea of what they’ll do after the war is over. They both know there’s a chance neither of them will survive, and so they can’t give one another false hope. “You’re clean now,” Ben says, interrupting his own thoughts. “Do you want to leave?”

Tilting her head back, he watches the water wash over her face as he holds her, and she seems perfectly at peace with every fresh wave over her cheeks. Serenity washes over the bond, settling itself like a bandage over the wound of her pain, then she leans forward, and her eyes blink open. Water droplets fall from her lashes, splashing onto her cheeks like tears as he watches, captivated by her every movement. It’s a sight like this that makes him want to tell her so many things, say so much that will only cause them both more pain, more agony, and he knows he can’t do that to her. 

“I don’t want to leave,” she says, and it nearly breaks him to hear as his eyes drift down in time with the water flowing down her cheeks, watching as it gathers in her cupid’s bow before continuing over her lips down to her chin. His eyes, however, linger on her lips, flushed pink by the heat of the water like her cheeks and the tops of her breasts. 

She shouldn’t say stuff like that, but  _ force _ , he loves hearing it. “Rey,” he whispers, then he watches her lower lip quiver, another shudder passing through his body as he glances back up at her eyes. “There are so many things I want.”

Steam rises in the space between them, around them, and maybe it has been this entire time, but he’s only just now noticed how much it’s fogging the glass windows around them, the mirror on the far side of his bathroom, and how clean it feels as he breathes it in. Every breath feels like it’s washing out the dirt from his very soul, cleansing him of his sins, and he thinks she feels it, too, that she’s being washed spiritually and physically. 

Breathing in deeply a couple more times, Ben lets one of his hands come up to caress the base of her skull, fingers tangling themselves in her hair as he leans in a little more closely to her. “Ben…” she breathes, then her breath hitches as his lips meet hers, and suddenly the steam overwhelms them both, making him feel as if he’s faded into the background noise of the universe as they become one soul, one being. 

Their bond is positively  _ humming _ with life, singing with emotions he’s never been taught how to interpret or read, and he can’t think about anything but how incredible it feels to be kissing her. A rhythm settles between them quickly, and it’s slow, almost casual, even, but something about it still shakes him to his core. 

He doesn’t know what this is, but it feels nice, being with her, holding her close, being needed, wanted, cared for, and dare he say… loved? Liked at least. She likes him, at least a little. Maybe in a few minutes when the bond inevitably pulls them apart, she won’t like him quite as much, but for now… they’ve allowed themselves a little bubble. 

In time, this will burst, they will go back to the disdain they usually have, but they’ve just opened up a new door in the relationship between them. Now on the days where they actually manage to banter instead of argue, maybe sometimes they’ll share a forbidden but sweet little kiss. People would execute them if they knew about this, but here, now, shrouded in the steam from the hot water, he knows no one will catch them. They’re at no risk of getting caught. 

This feels like comfort, like something pure and good, and it makes him think of home in a way he hasn’t in nearly a decade. He feels like he’s complete, and he hadn’t known a piece of him had been missing until now, but now he’s a half made whole by her lips, by the perfect way in which she fits against him and he never knew he could feel like this. It’s the most remarkable, beautiful thing he’s ever felt, but it’s the most forbidden, dangerous thing he could possibly be experiencing. 

He should never have helped her here, he should have turned away, it would’ve been easier on them both, but he could never have done that. He knows this is right, in spite of all odds, in spite of what it should be, they’ve started something dangerous and exhilarating. 

As her body presses against his, as he bends over her, he knows that every other time the bond connects them from then on that it will be a dance of who moves to who first, a contest of who resists the magnetic pull for longer. This marks a change, and they can try and blame it on the shock and trauma of what she’s just been through, can blame it on their nudity, or a moment of weakness, but they’d both be fools to try. 

Pulling back from the kiss, he looks into her eyes, watching her as she breathes deep through the steam that fogs the space between them, water dripping from her eyelashes as if they’re standing in a torrential downpour. This moment is their last chance, he thinks, but then he knows they never had one in the first place. They were always going to end up here, whether it happened the moment they met or on their deathbeds, this was always the end of the path, but it was the beginning of the next. 

“There are so many things I want, too,” she whispers, then she leans in for another kiss, and his lips eagerly greet hers as he confirms his agreement with what she’s telling him with a soft moan. “So many things I can’t have.”

“What do we do?” he whispers against her mouth, moving in to kiss her again, wondering how the hell they’ll ever pull off what they’ve just started. 

She hums against his lips, hands twining through his hair before she pulls back, then looks down at her body. “Just hold me. Don’t… When this happens, don’t talk, don’t mention the war, the fight, just-just hold me.”

“Would you hold me, too? If the positions were reversed?” Ben doesn’t want his voice to sound so shaky, but he can’t help it, his whole body is trembling. He’s nervous, impossibly so, and he wants to stop shaking, but in spite of the warmth of the water, in spite of how clean it is now that the blood is gone, he can’t. 

Much to his delight, however, she nods a minute later, and he feels his confidence slowly become restored. “I would,” she answers him, then she takes one of his hands, and brings it up to her lips. “I will.” Then she goes in for another kiss, and his eyes close as a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, anticipating the reunion of their lips. 

It never comes. Just before she touches him, just as he’s starting to feel her warmth against him, she fades away, and the connection drones away. Frustration fills him before he ever opens his eyes, but now at least… at least now he has hope.  Rey trusts him, and even though they aren’t allowed to be together, even though they are still parted by a war, by space itself, he knows they’ve just taken a step forward. He doesn’t know where this path will take them, doesn’t know where it’ll lead, but he knows he has to follow it, even if it could get them killed, even if it’s not allowed, even if it’s  _ forbidden. _


End file.
